Fic: Wolfsbane (4/5) [TVXQ RPS | AU]
“We sound like a joke,” Yunho says. “A vampire and a shaman walk into a bar.”
It’s after dinner and they’re sitting in Changmin’s car, parked along the Han River like any other courting couple, looking at the lights across the bridge and watching the water flow past.
Changmin smiles. “What’s the punch line?”
“I don’t know. I’m not good at telling jokes. I always laugh too much.” Yunho snuggles down into his jacket. The evening isn’t cold, but there’s a breeze from the water. “I always thought this was a romantic thing to do, but I never found the time to do it before.” He glances at Changmin. “I guess now I get to ask that cliché question: Do you come here often?”
“The river? Yes.” Changmin gazes through the windscreen. “Some things don’t change. Peripherally they do-the buildings, the industry, the pollution-but the river is still here. It’s still flowing. That’s a comfort.” He turns to look at Yunho. “Why did you never bring anyone here?”
Yunho shrugs, embarrassed. “I don’t know. I hadn’t met the right person.”
Changmin snorts. Resumes staring at the river. “Then why did you insist on coming down here now?”
Yunho says nothing.
Realisation arrives a few seconds later. Changmin turns back to him, startled and angry, his eyes black with emotion. “Are you mocking me?”
“No.” Yunho reaches out, then stops. “You’re the only person I would want to bring here.”
Changmin stares at him, prickly and tense. “Why? Because my tragic past moved you to so much pity?”
The events and revelations of the past few days roll together, gathering pace and crushing everything in their path, and Yunho snaps. “God forbid anyone should care. You can manage the pity part all by yourself.” He grabs at the door handle with his injured arm and snarls at the backwash of pain. Frustrated, he turns so he can use his left hand, but before he can get the door open, the locks snap shut.
“Don’t go,” Changmin says.
Keeping his fingers curled around the handle, Yunho says, “Unlock it.”
“If I do, you’ll leave.”
Yunho looks back over his shoulder. “Try me.”
Changmin’s expression gives away nothing.
“Trust me,” Yunho says, softly.
Changmin unlocks the doors.
Yunho lets go of the handle, turns and shifts across the seat towards him. Close, closer. Changmin lifts his gloved hands and touches Yunho’s face, strokes with his fingertips, slides his leather-clad thumb over Yunho’s lips. Yunho dips his head slightly, catches at the seam on the glove with his teeth and tugs at it playfully. Changmin pushes a little, and Yunho sucks the thumb into his mouth. The scent and taste of fresh leather fill his senses; the texture of it on his tongue excites him. He can feel the warmth of Changmin’s thumb beneath the covering; he can feel the fluttering of Changmin’s fingers against his cheek.
Changmin makes a sound. Withdraws his thumb. He places his gloved hand over Yunho’s mouth and kisses him.
It’s the strangest kiss Yunho has ever received; the strangest kiss he’s ever given. He closes his eyes, mouths at the leather-clad palm as Changmin kisses the back of his own hand. They press closer together, Changmin cradling the side of Yunho’s head, holding him into the embrace. It’s weird. It’s hot. Yunho runs his good hand over Changmin’s thighs. Maybe they can do this without touching bare skin or having any contact with bodily fluids. There must be a way.
They push even closer. Changmin makes a hungry noise low in his throat. His hair tickles across Yunho’s face. Yunho adjusts the angle of his stifled kiss. A few strands of Changmin’s hair fall across his lips, catch in his mouth. Within seconds the hair is singeing, disintegrating, leaving the taste of bitter ash on his tongue.
They break apart, breathing hard. Changmin yanks out the strands of burning hair, a queasy look on his face, then he ruffles his gloved hand through his fringe.
Yunho leans back against the seat and exhales, trying to calm the insistent throb of arousal running through him.
After an endless moment of silence, Changmin says, “I would remember if I’d compelled you just now.”
He sounds bewildered, as if surprised that Yunho wanted to kiss him. He seems so taken aback that Yunho laughs. “Is it so hard to imagine that someone might actually like you?”
“I slaughtered your best friend’s family.”
“And he fed me poison every day of my life since I was a child.” Yunho turns his head and smiles a little. “You’re both as bad as each other.”
“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Changmin says.
“But in mathematics, two negatives make a positive.”
Changmin gives him another puzzled look. “You’re trying to like me.”
“And you’re trying to court me.” Yunho stares out at the river. “I thought I’d meet you halfway.”
“I could kill you.”
“Ditto.”
They sit in silence. The breeze picks up, ghosts over them.
Yunho shivers. “It’s my life,” he says quietly. “My decision. I realised that if I do what Siwon wants and keep on taking the poison for the rest of my days, I run the risk of harming even more people. I would have to resign myself to being alone. I don’t like being alone. I like people, I like hanging out and talking; I like making love, I like kissing. I can’t be close to anyone while I’m toxic. But if I stop taking the aconite, you’ll kill me. And I’m okay with that, because I know it’s nothing personal-it’s just the vampire catnip thing. Then I wondered how long you’d wait, given that you’ve waited sixteen years already. And I thought if I took the wolfsbane a bit longer, maybe I can’t ever have a normal life, but at least I wouldn’t be lonely, because I’d have you.”
Changmin exhales a soft laugh. “I thought I was devious.”
Yunho looks at him. “I’m selfish. You can say it.”
“No. You’re not.” Changmin’s voice is rich with emotion, his eyes black with intensity. “You’re the least selfish person I’ve encountered.”
Yunho drops his gaze. “I don’t want to die yet. I want something real. Something just for me.”
There’s another silence, and then suddenly Changmin yanks at the door and gets out of the car. He walks away, his body rigid. His boots crunch across the gravel, thud on the concrete of the footpath. He stands by the side of the river, head bowed, hair stirred by the breeze.
Yunho wonders if he’s made the wrong choice. Even if he has, he won’t regret his decision. He doesn’t believe in regrets.
Long moments later, Changmin comes back. He strides to Yunho’s side of the car and curls his gloved hands over the top of the door, gripping tight. He stares down at Yunho with fury and wonder. “Why?” he asks. “Why are you so good?”
Yunho doesn’t know how to respond. He shrugs, grasps at the first thing that comes to mind. “Because I’m a shaman? Aren’t shamans supposed to be mediators?”
Changmin laughs, the sound disbelieving and wild. “If it wouldn’t burn my cock off, I’d take you right here and now on the hood of the car.”
Lust punches into Yunho. He claws the fingernails of his good hand into his palm. “I’d like that. You fucking me on the car in public, I mean. Not the other thing. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Changmin stares. “You have no idea how much I want to kiss you.”
Yunho lets out a frustrated sigh. “Yeah, well. We can’t do that. Wolfsbane, the greatest cockblock known to man or vampire.”
A short laugh breaks from Changmin. He lets go of the car door and swings away, goes a few paces before he turns, walks around the front of the Mercedes, and climbs back inside. He puts both hands on the wheel but makes no attempt to start the engine.
Yunho tips back his head and gazes up at the night sky, the stars muffled by light pollution. “I want to know everything about you.”
Changmin slants him a watchful look. “I’ll tell you everything. Just ask.”
“Siwon’s ancestor,” Yunho says. “The Jesuit. Tell me about him. How did he come to put the binding spell on you?”
The keys rattle in the ignition as Changmin leans forward. “You must be cold,” he says, flicking a switch so the soft-top slides out and folds up and over them. They’re silent while it happens, and when they’re cocooned within the car, it seems even quieter, even darker than before.
Changmin doesn’t look at him. “After Princess Sukhwi died, I was... different. I went mad with grief. I killed anyone and everyone who stood in my path. Everyone, regardless of age, gender, or innocence. It was indiscriminate butchery. It helped fill the void, but the more I killed, the more I wanted to kill. Bloodlust, I suppose you’d call it. Some sort of never-ending berserker rage, only it was not anger that drove me, but pain.”
Yunho listens, trying to imagine the amount of anguish suffered by Changmin and his victims, his heart aching for all the souls taken and destroyed so easily.
“Around this time,” Changmin continues, “I discovered there was a name for what I had become. I found that I was not the only such monster to have been made. There were others, though none had been created by magic like me. Some were the vengeful dead; some were raised by mischance because a cat had crossed their corpse. Others were created by the bite and blood of an older vampire. From them I learned that there were rules to ensure the balance of nature. For instance, I could not enter an enclosed private dwelling without invitation, but the palace was open to me because so many people passed through it. I was created from all five elements, but the ones that rule me are Earth and Fire. My weaknesses are Wood and Water; my balance is Metal. I took as much information from others of my kind, and then I killed them all.”
“Why?” Yunho asks softly.
Changmin raises an eyebrow. “Why does a madman do anything? I did it because I could. I was stronger than them, faster than them. I was born from a shaman’s magic. I thought myself better than them.”
Yunho shakes his head but offers no comment.
“You would judge me?” Changmin stares at him through the darkness. “I wouldn’t blame you. Be disgusted with me. Be appalled by my actions. I was worse than an animal.”
“Any animal, if wounded, will lash out at those around it,” Yunho says.
“Don’t try to excuse my behaviour.” Changmin taps the fingers of one hand against the steering wheel. “Don’t forget that if I could, I would tear out your throat and drain you of every last drop of blood your body holds until you were nothing but a desiccated husk-and there would be no excuse for that beyond greed.”
Yunho puts his good hand to his neck. He can feel his pulse thrumming.
Changmin laughs without humour. “But to return to the past... My savagery was so widespread across the capital that the King went into hiding. He summoned his ministers, who summoned the religious leaders, who devised a way of binding me. They brought together a shaman, a Buddhist, a Taoist, and a Christian. After conversing with the spirits, the shaman said that Lord Jeong’s son had in his possession a silver pendant that had been discovered on the floor of my cell when the Mu woman and I were found dead.”
“Silver,” Yunho interrupts. “There was an old silver coin used in the spell that turned you.”
“Yes. And now you see why Metal is my balance.” Changmin slides his fingers over the steering wheel and grips tight, the soft leather of his glove creaking. “The silver coin was cast into the pendant. The pendant contains my soul. Or at least, it contains one of them.”
Yunho blinks. “You have more than one soul?”
Changmin nods. “We all have two souls, the hun and the po. Unholy creatures-vampires-we are driven by po, the yin or corporeal soul. It makes us dark; it demands that we feed on base emotions. The silver pendant contains my hun, my yang, ethereal soul. Splitting the two souls made me a monster. Anyone in possession of my hun soul and with the ability to call upon the spirits would have power over me. They could bind me. That’s what they did, Siwon’s ancestor and his colleagues. They bound me with my own soul.”
The wind rises, dashing a few leaves against the side of the car. Yunho fixes his gaze on the river, stares at the lights reflected in the black water. He thinks about two souls in one body. Doubtless Siwon and Pastor Lee would reject such a notion, but he can believe it. The ghosts he saw as a child must be formed from either hun or po. Yes, he believes it. He turns to face Changmin. “What did they do to you?”
“The procedure was simple.” Changmin grimaces. “They lured me into a forest and hemmed me in with a circle of fire. Half buried in the earth at my feet was a wooden bowl of water containing the silver pendant. They cast the spell, a four-way binding to limit my power and contain my rage. I am still swift, I am still strong, but I possess only a fifth of the speed and strength I once had. Instead of acting without thought, I must now think before I act. The spell at once made me less dangerous and more deadly.”
Changmin smiles. “With a four-way spell, the possibilities for ambiguity are so much greater. Only the Jesuit saw the loopholes in the incantations of his colleagues. Only he made the necessary adjustments to his invocation to the saints-a prayer built on top of the binding spell. It’s this additional prayer-spell that stops me from extinguishing that line of the Choi family and prevents me from being free.”
Yunho considers this. “So your hun soul is inside the silver pendant, and they placed the binding spell on the pendant.”
“Yes. The four who cast the spell were supposed to take turns in guarding the pendant, but I killed three of them. Thanks to his treachery, the Jesuit escaped, taking with him my hun. The Choi family has it still, and until I get it back, I will keep killing them every few generations. In return, they loathe and despise me and would see me destroyed.”
“Siwon mentioned something about that.” Yunho looks down at his injured arm. “That’s where I’m supposed to come in. You drink my blood, I poison you, you burn up, Siwon cuts off your head and dismembers you.”
“A crude yet effective method.” Changmin snorts. “Destroying my physical body is all very well, but my hun would remain and so, technically, I could haunt them. My po, without a human form, would wander around in search of my hun. There must be balance in all things. To end me, they must destroy both souls simultaneously-and so most of the time, I stay far away from that family until I feel like herding them together for slaughter.”
Yunho rubs a hand through his hair. “Knowing Siwon’s family, I’m surprised no one tried to capture you in the past three hundred years.”
Changmin is silent for a long time. “They need something else,” he says at last. “The Chois have no supernatural gifts. They don’t have the ability to destroy me completely even if they had both me and my hun in one place. They need...” He hesitates. Flicks a look at Yunho. Continues softly, “They need someone who can call upon the spirits.”
Understanding hits Yunho with sudden, devastating force. “A shaman.”
“Not just any shaman.” Changmin looks at him with a terrible smile. “A male shaman in full possession of his powers. They need you.”
*
The drive back to Yunho’s apartment is filled with quiet, simmering tension. Yunho doesn’t know what to say to break the silence, and it seems as if Changmin is angry, somehow. Perhaps he’s regretting everything he’s said. Perhaps he feels too open, too vulnerable.
Changmin walks him up to the fourth floor and opens the apartment door.
Yunho crosses the threshold and stands in the hallway, looking at him. “Why did you tell me about the pendant-about me being the one who could destroy you?”
Changmin flicks his hair from his eyes. “Because you told me about the wolfsbane. It seemed only fair to offer you something in return.”
“That’s not it,” Yunho says without thinking.
“Isn’t it?” Changmin tilts his head, gaze darkening. “Then tell me why I did it.”
Yunho takes a step back. “You can come in.”
“I don’t need your permission.” Changmin stays outside in the hallway. The light is indifferent, a flickering fluorescent strip that buzzes and stutters occasionally into silence. It makes Changmin look pale and tired, his eyes shadowed. He leans against the doorframe the way he did yesterday, when he was waiting for Yunho to invite him in. The hope has gone from his expression. Now he’s just weary.
Yunho thinks he’d give almost anything to be able to hold him. To stop himself from reaching out, he tucks his thumbs into the back pockets of his jeans. “What would you do if you regained your hun?”
“What would I do.” Changmin shifts his weight and leans to one side, resting his head against the doorframe. “I would decide whether I wanted to continue existing as a vampire or if I should live out the rest of my natural lifespan as a human.”
It’s not the answer Yunho was expecting. “Do you want to be human again?”
Changmin gives him a glittering look. “I want the choice to decide.”
Yunho nods. He can understand that desire. Maybe he can understand it more than most. His own situation is nowhere near as complicated-he can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like to choose between being immortal or mortal-but he supposes it’s not really about that. It’s the fact that, right now and for the past three hundred-odd years, Changmin has had no choice.
“Your hun,” he says, voice quiet. “The silver pendant. What does it look like?”
“I don’t know.” Changmin looks exhausted and dispirited. “I searched the house the day I killed Siwon’s family, the same way I always search the house every time I massacre the Chois, but I couldn’t find it. I don’t know what it looks like now. It might not even be a pendant any more-the sensible thing would have been to melt it down as soon as the binding spell was cast, and form the silver into something else. For all I know, my soul inhabits a set of sugar spoons.”
“Siwon’s family has never had sugar spoons,” Yunho says. “It’s your soul, can’t you feel it?”
Changmin makes an annoyed sound. “Do you think it calls out to me? ‘Changmin, I’m over here’? No. I’ll know it when I touch it, but until then...”
Yunho takes his hands out of his pockets and squares his shoulders. “Maybe I would know. If I’m such a shit-hot shaman-”
This brings a ghost of a smile to Changmin’s lips. “You are.”
“If I am, then maybe I can find it for you.”
Silence burns between them. The light in the corridor flickers, on-off-on. Changmin lifts his head. “Why would you do that?”
Yunho swallows; glances away for a moment. “Because I don’t want you to kill any more of Siwon’s family.”
“I can’t kill him,” Changmin reminds him gently, “and you have my word that I won’t harm his future wife and their darling children, or his adorable grandchildren. By the time I’m ready to commit mass murder again, you won’t be here. So why do you care about Siwon’s descendants?
“Because,” Yunho says. “Because it’s wrong to keep on taking revenge just because you can.”
Changmin looks at him. “It’s a means to an end. They can stop their own suffering by giving me back my hun.”
“It’s not just that.” Yunho meets his gaze. “I worry about your suffering, too.”
* * *
Exactly a week since Yunho’s first disastrous date with Changmin and the swift unravelling of everything he’s known, Siwon finally calls.
“Is this a bad time?” Siwon asks when Yunho answers the phone.
Yunho hesitates; flicks a look at Changmin seated opposite him. They’ve just finished lunch and are lingering over coffee, the rest of the afternoon waiting for them to decide what to do with it. Siwon’s call is long overdue, but Yunho wishes he hadn’t picked this exact moment. He doesn’t want this conversation in front of Changmin, who’s watching him with a wary yet smug expression.
It makes Yunho feel like a bone fought over by two dogs, and the image is enough to make him want to hang up and do this later, but instead he says, “It’s okay.”
“Good.” Now it’s Siwon’s turn to hesitate. “Yunho,” he says. Pauses. There’s the sound of paper shuffling in the background. “Yun,” he begins again, “I’m going to America. I’m moving to Los Angeles. I want you to come with me.”
“What?” Yunho’s grip on the phone tightens. Of all the things Siwon could have said, this is the most unexpected. Surprise rolls around Yunho’s head; anger is swift to follow. “When? When were you going to tell me about this?”
“I’m leaving on Tuesday.” Siwon takes a quick breath. “I know it doesn’t give you much time-”
“Not much time?” Yunho hears his voice climb in tone and volume. Changmin is frowning, eyes gone narrow and black. He doesn’t want to deal with Changmin on top of this right now, so he shuffles around in his chair and fixes his gaze outside the restaurant window.
“It’s not like you’ve got much to leave behind,” Siwon says, sounding defensive. “You’re signed off work because of your wrist so if you resigned, they could find someone to replace you. It’s not like your apartment is that great and I can come round and help you pack, or if you want, I can get professionals in who’ll do it for you, and-”
“No. Stop.” Yunho waves his injured hand as if he can cut the flow of Siwon’s words. The food he ate at lunch sits uneasily in his stomach. He feels hot and confused. “Why? Siwon, why?”
Siwon is silent for a moment, then says, “I’ve always wanted you to work with me. This is a really good opportunity. Opening a North American office will take a lot of effort, and you’re the hardest-working person I know. You’re perfect for this job. And I’m sorry I didn’t give you more of an advance warning, but you said you didn’t want to see me for a while after... after what happened, and I wanted to respect that. But now I’m telling you-I’m asking you-please come with me.”
Yunho twists at his hair. He closes his eyes. “No, Siwon. Tell me why.”
The silence is longer this time, and then Siwon says, “Because you’re my best friend and I need you.”
Opposite him, Changmin leans forward, his hands flat on the table and his eyes blazing.
Yunho tries to ignore him. “Is it because of what I found out last week?”
“No!” Siwon sounds upset. “It’s not about that. Not all about it, anyway. Yun, don’t you see? This is the chance for us to make a new start. To get away from everything that’s been holding us back. My family’s past, the-the vampire thing, all the rest of it... We can go to America and forget about it.”
The passion in Siwon’s voice is sincere. It’s as if he really believes this. As if he can sweep it all away without fully dealing with the consequences of his actions. Yunho doesn’t know if he envies him or pities him, but he’s furious that Siwon seems to think that nothing’s changed, that Yunho will go along with his plans just because.
“I can’t forget,” Yunho says, keeping his tone level. “If you want to forget, that’s fine, but don’t ever think for one moment that I will.”
“Yun...” Siwon draws in a breath. “Where are you? I’ll come right away and we can talk. Let me explain.”
Yunho shakes his head, even though Siwon can’t see him. “There’s nothing to explain. I understand why you poisoned me, Siwon, I understand.”
“You hate me.” Siwon’s voice catches.
“I don’t.” Suddenly this is a much harder conversation than he’d anticipated. Yunho slumps over the table, pushing his coffee cup aside. “I couldn’t ever hate you.”
“Then please come with me,” Siwon begs. “Let me make things right.”
“You can’t.” The world has turned dull; Yunho doesn’t want to be disappointed, he doesn’t want this to hurt so much, but his heart aches. “I understand why you did it. But that doesn’t take away the fact that I’m responsible for causing people to get sick. I’m responsible for a man’s death.”
Across the table, Changmin gives him a curious, sharp glance.
Siwon tries to protest, but Yunho hasn’t finished. “I know you’ll tell me that none of those things are my fault because I didn’t know I was toxic. Is ignorance really an excuse? You kept me ignorant all that time. Is your life worth more than Private Kam’s?”
Siwon is silent.
“You should have told me. Right from the start, you should have told me. You were my friend, my best friend, and you kept this from me.”
“Would you have done it?” Siwon sounds husky with emotion. “Would you have taken the pills for me if I’d told you the truth?”
“Yes.” Yunho’s face is wet with tears. He splays the fingers of his free hand, hides behind them and turns his face, leans into his phone. “Yes, because I loved you. You were closer than a brother. I would have done anything for you. Anything to keep you safe. But you should have told me. You should have given me the choice. I can forgive you everything but that.”
Silence. Then Siwon says, very softly, “I’m sorry.”
Yunho sniffs and scrubs at his cheeks, drying his tears. “I’m not coming with you. I’m staying here.” He clears his throat, regaining his scattered control, trying to detach himself. “If you would do one thing before you go... Visit my parents and say goodbye. They’ll be sorry to see you leave. You know my mother adores you.”
“I’ll visit.” Siwon sounds small. “Yun, if you would do one thing for me, too...”
“What?”
Siwon pauses for a heartbeat. “Keep taking the vitamin pills.”
Yunho swallows the burst of hysteria that threatens. “The poison, Siwon. You mean you want me to keep taking the poison.”
“It’s important.” Now Siwon sounds anxious. “The monster can’t follow me across saltwater, but if you won’t come with me, then you’re vulnerable and I-we can’t protect each other.”
Yunho laughs, but it feels like his heart is shattering. “That’s what you’re saying now? That we’re mutually protecting one another?”
“Please.” Siwon’s begging. “I’ll arrange for more of the pills to be delivered. Please, Yun. It’s the only way you’ll stay safe.”
It’s on the tip of Yunho’s tongue to tell him to fuck off straight to hell, but he can’t bring himself to say it. “Goodbye, Siwon. Be happy and successful and never contact me again.”
“Yunho,” Siwon shouts down the phone. “Yunho, don’t-”
Yunho cuts the call, turns the phone over, and takes out the battery. He stares at the two pieces for a moment, then says, “I need a new phone.”
Changmin reaches across the table. Lifts the empty shell of the phone. Crushes it into bits. “You do now.”
Laughter bubbles up, hot and rancid. Yunho giggles, then puts a hand over his mouth before he can start crying again. He’s shaking. He shifts his gaze and looks out of the window until he feels calmer.
“I take it you heard the whole thing,” he says after a while.
“Yes.” Changmin brushes the pile of plastic and metal into the middle of the table and looks at him. “You are far too good for this world.”
Yunho ignores that. He doesn’t feel good. He feels like shit. “So it’s true what he said about saltwater?”
Changmin nods. “One of the limitations of the binding spell.” He fiddles with the broken pieces of the phone, not looking up. “You could have gone with him.”
“What for? At least I can trust you.”
That gives Changmin pause. He tilts his head, lips parting. “You trust me?”
Yunho picks up his mostly cold coffee. “You’re honest. I know you want to drain my catnip blood. I know that’ll kill me. You haven’t lied to me. So yes, I trust you.”
Changmin reaches across the table and lays his hand over Yunho’s bandaged wrist. “Stop taking the wolfsbane.”
The coffee tastes awful, the scent of it too strong now. Yunho grimaces and puts down the cup. “I’ll get sick. The doctor said-”
“You’re a shaman. Stop taking it.” Changmin gazes at him, absolutely serious. “What you said the other night by the river-I will wait. However long it takes, I’ll wait. I won’t leave. If you want to take the aconite for another twenty years, I’ll still be here. But know that it won’t kill you to stop taking the pills, and if you stop taking them, it’ll still be a few years before the poison leaves your system. It’ll be years before I can-” He stops himself, face pale and tense.
Yunho drops his gaze and stares into the cup at the dried ring of milk foam and the dregs of the coffee. “You and Siwon both talk about me being a shaman, but I don’t see any evidence of it.”
“The aconite,” Changmin says. “You’re not dead.”
“Apart from that.”
Changmin smiles, starts to relax. “The glass. In the restaurant on our date last week. You smashed it just by looking at it.”
Yunho pushes the cup away. “I thought I could see blood in it.”
“You could see blood,” Changmin tells him. “Just as you could see me in the mirror all those years ago. And the ghosts in the walls in Siwon’s house, and the memory-impressions of the killings.”
Yunho laughs without humour. “Those are kind of crappy powers, really. Proper shamans do rituals for good harvests and things like that. They deliver spirit-messages to the living. They heal people. I’ve only made people sick and one guy even died because of me.”
“Because of the wolfsbane,” Changmin says softly but with emphasis.
“Same difference.” Yunho glares at him. “If I’m a shaman then why couldn’t I heal those people? If poison and cure both exist inside me, shouldn’t they cancel each other out somehow?”
“Maybe if you were in full possession of your powers. But you’re not.”
Yunho sits back. Shakes his head.
They’re silent for a while, watching the bustle of the restaurant, then Changmin says, “Do you ever hear things-wing-beats?”
“Yes.” Yunho thinks about it, remembering all the times he’s heard that sound, how sometimes it drowned out everything else, and he realises he hasn’t heard it in a while. A week, to be precise. “Not so much these past few days, but... yes.”
“That’s the sound of the spirits.” Changmin gives him a half smile. “They hate me. They’re afraid of what I’ll do to you. A vampire and a shaman, that’s-” He stops himself again.
“What?” Yunho frowns at him. “What were you going to say?”
Changmin deflects the question. “You could be immensely powerful. You could summon and control the dead. That’s a terrifying prospect. But first your power needs to be triggered.”
Yunho wrinkles his nose. “How?”
“I don’t know, truly. It’s different for each shaman. Your power manifested through sickness when you were a child. Shamans in every culture endure near-death experiences, sometimes more than once. It gives them the knowledge of the spirit world. They have to experience sickness in order to be able to heal.” Changmin pauses, then continues, “It’s inside you, waiting for you to tap into it. But it’s sealed up as a way of protecting you and everyone around you. When you’re ready to deal with the power and its consequences, it’ll unlock. Something will trigger it, and...”
“And?”
Changmin looks at him. “Not even I would stand in your way.”
* * *
The next morning, Yunho takes only one of the aconite pills. He goes through the day expecting to feel different, but he doesn’t. Stupid, really; it’s just one pill less. He takes only one pill the next day, too, and the day after that, and on Tuesday, the day Siwon is leaving for America, Yunho seals the yellow pill bottle in layers of packing tape and throws it into the bin.
He feels fine. He’d expected some sort of withdrawal symptoms, but it looks like Changmin was right. His super-special shamanic blood is probably starting to cleanse the decades of accumulated poison out of his system at that very moment.
Yunho decides that, since he feels fine, he’ll go and talk to his boss about returning to work. It’ll be another six weeks before the fracture heals completely, and so he won’t be able to carry heavy trays around, but there’ll be other duties to which he can attend.
“You don’t like my company?” Changmin asks, teasing, when Yunho says he’s going back to work.
“Of course I do,” Yunho says, quite seriously. “Siwon used to come and see me in the coffee shop every day. You can do the same, if you want.”
Changmin gives him a hot-eyed look. “I am not Siwon.”
Four days after Yunho starts back at work, Jooyeon nudges up to him at the end of the midmorning rush and says, “Are you all right? You look kind of washed-out. Is your wrist hurting?”
Yunho lifts his bandaged arm, turns it slightly. It hasn’t been painful for the past few days or so. “It seems okay.” He smiles at her. “I’ll be fine.”
She doesn’t seem convinced, giving him an uncertain look as she goes off to take an order. Yunho keeps the smile on his face and studies his hand. He twitches his fingers, watches them move slightly. The skin is a dull colour, almost grey under the lights. Though he can move his fingers, he can’t actually feel them. That’s weird.
A customer comes up to pay. Yunho taps at the keys on the till-it took a while to get used to doing it left-handed, but he’s pretty good at it now-and then he stares at the register in bewilderment. From force of habit he’d reckoned the total of the customer’s bill in his head, but the till display is showing him a different figure. “I’m sorry,” he says to the customer, “this isn’t the correct amount. Let me do that again.”
He voids the sale and starts afresh. His fingers keep slipping on the keypad. He has no sensation in the fingertips of his left hand.
Trying to keep his anxiety at bay, he voids the sale a second time and does a manual override, not wanting to keep the customer waiting any longer. His hand feels like it’s a lump of lead. He has to use every scrap of concentration to take the money, push it into the till drawers, and select the change.
Jooyeon comes back, her expression worried. “You look terrible.”
“I’m-” He wants to say he’s fine, but cold, clawing nausea grips at him and almost doubles him over.
Jooyeon pushes him towards the kitchen, clucking with concern. “Sit down. Take ten minutes, we’re not busy.”
Yunho stumbles into the kitchen and leans against the wall, taking deep breaths to quell the sickness roiling in his stomach. His throat is dry. He’s sweating. He can smell it, the sweat and panic, and it makes him want to vomit. He groans, turns his head to press his cheek against the tiled wall.
A few more deep breaths. He starts to feel better. The world snaps back into focus. He can hear the murmur of conversation from the shop, the click and hiss of the espresso and steamed milk machines, the scent of coffee and syrups and cakes and-
Nausea hits him so fast he can barely keep upright. His stomach lurches and he runs for the nearest sink, bends down into it and throws up. He gropes for the tap, turns it on. He can see the water running, but he can’t feel it. His vision is blackening around the edges, pointillist dots encroaching upon him. There are wing-beats in his head, fast and rapid, gathering, flurrying.
Yunho tries to keep calm, but inside he’s terrified. Numbness in the extremities. Nausea. Vomiting. He knows what this is. Aconite poisoning. He shouldn’t have gone cold turkey. He should’ve listened to the doctor. He should’ve listened to Siwon.
As if from far away, he hears Jooyeon come in, her voice playful: “Yunho, your hot customer is here-Yunho? Yunho!”
He tries to drag himself upright, wants to warn her to stay away from him. She mustn’t touch him, mustn’t try to help. He doesn’t want to poison her.
Jooyeon comes towards him, eyes wide with fright, but before she can reach him, she’s pushed aside.
Yunho keels over.
Changmin catches him. “I’ve got you,” he says, holding him close.
Yunho wants to shove him away. His shirt is soaked through with sweat, but Changmin is still holding him. He’s still holding him even though Yunho can smell the oily, sickening stench of singed flesh. He’s hurting Changmin and he can’t bear it. “Let me go,” he whispers, throat closing on the words.
Changmin only holds him tighter. “Never.”
* * *
Yunho wakes in a king-sized bed in a room that isn’t his. It’s three times bigger than his entire apartment, including the balcony, and it’s decorated in soft, muted colours and furnished to exquisite taste. For all that, it seems impersonal, more like a hotel room than someone’s intimate living space, and he’s not surprised when the door opens and Changmin comes in.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I should be dead.” Yunho tries to smile, to make light of his answer.
Changmin sinks down into an armchair close by the bed. There’s a marble-topped card table next to it; upon it is an open book laid spine upwards and tumbler of brandy. The cushion is squashed flat. It’s clear that Changmin has been watching over him for some time.
“You were very sick.” Changmin’s voice is rough. He looks tired.
Yunho stretches a little. His entire body aches with the memory of pain. It feels as if someone stuck him with red-hot needles and then flayed him. His wrist is still in plaster. He can feel again-his fingertips slide along the cool, smooth Egyptian cotton sheet-and his head is clear.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Four days.”
Yunho starts. “Four days?” He tries to push himself up onto his elbows, but just that small effort robs him of strength and brings a debilitating wave of nausea. Frustrated, he eases back onto the pillows and waits for the sickness to recede. He closes his eyes, focuses on his breathing. The sheets carry Changmin’s scent. Yunho turns his head, nuzzles deeper against the pillow, then he remembers, jerking a look at Changmin. “Your arm, your hand-you touched me and I was... I burned you.”
“All healed.” Changmin rolls back his shirtsleeve as proof, revealing flawless bare skin. He smiles. “Hurt like a bitch at the time, though.”
“What about Jooyeon?”
“I compelled her. All she remembers is that you got sick and I took you home. I talked to your boss, too, and persuaded him that you should take another couple of weeks of sick leave. He was happy to oblige.” Changmin reaches behind him and plumps the cushion, then sits back in the armchair and crosses his legs.
“A couple of weeks?” Yunho rubs his good hand through his hair. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble. Honestly, I feel better.”
Changmin snorts. “I think I preferred it when you were unconscious. You were less stubborn.” He runs a fingertip around the rim of the tumbler. “You used up all your strength fighting off the aconite poisoning. You need to rest and recuperate.”
Yunho rolls his eyes. “Then I should be in hospital. Or maybe I should start taking the pills again.”
“No.” Changmin picks up the brandy, agitates it. “This will pass.”
“What if it doesn’t?” Yunho snaps. He hates being sick. He hates this stupid, helpless feeling. He doesn’t want to be trapped here. Irrational anger boils up, overflows. Yunho shoots a glare at the tumbler in Changmin’s hand, and the glass shatters.
The brandy spills, spattering over Changmin’s cream-coloured trousers. He sits motionless, still holding what’s left of the tumbler, glittering fragments of glass around him and the rich scent of brandy in the air as the liquid soaks into the cloth.
Yunho stares. “I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’re just trying to survive.” Changmin stands up and brushes at the broken glass.
“Trying to survive so you can kill me,” Yunho amends.
Changmin stares at him. “Is that really what you think?”
In truth, Yunho doesn’t know what to think. There’s a faint pounding at his temples, like the onset of a headache, and he feels a little dizzy. Reaction to breaking the tumbler, he supposes. At least there’s no more wing-beats fluttering around his skull. He looks away as Changmin clears up the broken glass, then surreptitiously looks back again when Changmin unbuckles his belt and takes off his trousers.
Changmin smiles. “I’m quite happy for you to watch me get undressed.”
Yunho snorts in response, but wriggles back in the pillows and enjoys the view. Changmin tosses his trousers into the washing basket and opens the wardrobe, leaning forward to sort through his clothes. Yunho admires the long, lean line of Changmin’s legs, the high, round curve of his ass, and wishes he’d managed to spill brandy and broken glass on Changmin’s shirt, too.
Lazy arousal spins through him. Yunho pulls his gaze elsewhere. He looks around the room again, noting the difference between this and his own cluttered space. It’s a measure of how distracted he is that he remarks without any thought whatsoever, “You don’t have any pictures in here.”
The wardrobe door closes with a bang. “Funny, that.”
Yunho winces inwardly, but presses on: “You must have had friends. People you cared about. People you wanted to remember.”
Changmin pulls on a pair of jeans washed pale over the thighs. They’re tight enough to cling like a lover’s caress. He feeds his belt through the loops and buckles it in place, then turns to look at his reflection in the mirror and makes minor adjustments to the fall of his shirt.
The silence doesn’t deter Yunho. It just makes him even more curious. “Have you ever turned someone-made them into a vampire?”
Changmin leans closer to the mirror, his expression unreadable. “Three hundred and seventy years is a long time to be alone.”
“Then you did. You made a vampire.” Yunho sits up. “Where are they?”
“I made four,” Changmin says. “They’re all dead.”
“Dead?”
“I killed them.” Changmin turns from the mirror, keeping his back to Yunho. “They were... broken.”
Yunho shakes his head. “In what way?”
Changmin is silent for a while. Yunho stares at him, at the tension in his back, across his shoulders, the unguarded emotion evident in the way he bows his head. Finally Changmin exhales. He turns to face Yunho. His eyes are black. “Remember I told you there were different types of vampire-some made by magic, some through accident, some for vengeance...”
Yunho nods.
“For those who are created through the bite and blood of an older vampire-” Changmin stops, his gaze sliding away again, becoming distant with memory. “It turns out that only certain bloodlines can adapt to the change. The people I chose were from the wrong families. They did not transform well. I had to end their agony.”
The idea of it is horrifying. Changmin has suffered so much; not only did he lose a beloved child, but his attempts at making a companion had also ended in grief. Yunho hugs his knees. “Which are the right bloodlines?”
Changmin looks back at him, gaze steady. “The shamanic families.”
There’s a moment of silence as Yunho absorbs this, and then he says, “You mean-”
“You would be magnificent,” Changmin says softly, his eyes kindling with some new emotion.
Another silence. Yunho is conscious of the beat of his heart, the flutter of his pulse. “Is that what you’ll do to me once the aconite is out of my system?” He doesn’t know if the prospect thrills him or terrifies him. He doesn’t know what answer he wants to receive. “Changmin, are you going to turn me?”
“I don’t know.” A look of terrible uncertainty crosses Changmin’s face. “It depends how well I can resist the lure of your blood. It’s physically painful for me to keep my distance now, while you’re still full of poison. As the aconite leaves your body, you’ll become more and more of a temptation. I might not be able to wait. I might run the risk of being weakened for the next one hundred years. I might just kill you.”
* * *
It takes a week before Yunho swaps the bed for the sofa. He falls asleep a lot, usually in the middle of a daytime drama or wildlife documentary, and often wakes to find a blanket over him and the television turned off, and Changmin curled up in the chair opposite, watching him.
“Sleep is the best healer,” Changmin says with quiet authority whenever Yunho apologises for being so boring.
The aconite poisoning has slowed Yunho more than he expected. He remembers it took a while for him to recover from the first round of sickness when he was a child, but now the physical restrictions chafe at him and make him short-tempered. It’s as if he’s reverted to being nine years old, and he feels whiny and sorry for himself. This in itself is a novel but unpleasant experience. He’s so used to sharing his company with others that he’s not sure what to do with himself now he has so much time alone.
Changmin goes out a lot at first.
“It’s nothing personal,” he says, his unblinking black gaze fixed on Yunho’s throat, or the inside of his elbow, or his wrist. Sometimes Changmin’s fangs slide out, sharp and glistening, and when that happens he moans quietly and clenches his hands into fists, takes shuddering breaths to calm himself.
And yet at other times, it seems easy for Changmin to be near him, and on those days Changmin’s eyes are their usual soft, deep brown and he seems relaxed, happy to sit close on the sofa as they watch a film together.
It takes Yunho a while to work out why this might be.
One afternoon Yunho is sitting on the couch, toying with the frayed hems of his jeans and half watching a kids’ TV show. A pile of manga is stacked on the coffee table-gifts from Changmin, and all of the volumes sequential. He’s in that state of mind that’s neither here nor there, bored and yet without knowledge of what he should be doing instead, and his mood is vacillating.
“Here.” Changmin hands him a mug of tea, lime blossom and ginseng, and sits beside him. After a moment, he reaches out, caresses Yunho’s ankle. A heartbeat later, he draws Yunho’s foot into his lap and lets it rest there. Changmin smiles, delighted with his own daring. His skin is flushed; his eyes gleam. Heat radiates from his body.
Yunho wriggles his foot, stroking his toes over the heavy cotton of Changmin’s trousers, then pressing against the hard muscle of his thigh. The bizarrely costumed presenters on the TV show break into song while shuffling around in a strange dance. Yunho drinks his tea, the scent sweet and familiar, and then realisation hits him. He puts down the mug so fast that tea slops over the side.
Changmin sits forward, immediately concerned. “Are you all right?”
Yunho withdraws his foot from Changmin’s lap and squashes into the corner of the sofa, unease thumping inside him. “I just realised. Oh God, I’m so stupid.”
“What?” Changmin looks confused. “What is it?”
“When you can bear to be close to me like this. I just realised how you can do it and not want to rip my throat out.” Yunho sees Changmin’s eyes flicker and knows he’s guessed right. “Oh, shit. You are, aren’t you. You’re going out and feeding on people to stop yourself from wanting to snack on me.”
Changmin’s lips part, but he doesn’t deny it. He looks at Yunho from beneath the sweep of his fringe. “This is what I am. This is what I need to do.”
Yunho jabs at the remote control and switches off the television. “Fuck.”
“I can wait for you, but I have to eat,” Changmin says, and he sounds so reasonable, as if he’s talking about a normal meal and not human blood. “Please believe me when I tell you that I never take more than I need. Not now. I don’t hurt them. I always compel them afterwards. They’ll never remember.”
That stirs a memory loose. Yunho frowns, gestures with his bandaged arm. “Those guys who attacked me. Did you-”
“I wasn’t gentle with them.” Changmin growls, his expression darkening. “I told you: I’m impulsive. Besides, they hurt you.”
Yunho snorts, more disturbed by this revelation than he thought he’d be. “Like you care about me.”
“I do.” Changmin flicks back his hair and meets Yunho’s gaze.
They stare at one another until Yunho glances away and mutters, “Only because I’m your catnip.”
Changmin laughs. “If you had a prize stallion, would you let it wander the streets or would you keep it safe?”
Yunho slants him an annoyed look. “I’m not a horse.”
“I’d like to ride you.” Changmin leans closer, his smile wicked and inviting.
Lust slides through Yunho, making him shiver even as it heats his blood. It’s dangerous, this wanting, so he snaps, “In your dreams.”
“Not just mine.”
They look at each other again, Changmin’s eyes turning black and slumberous. A series of hot, dirty images flood Yunho’s mind. He exclaims, aroused and shocked, his pulse racing faster. “Don’t do that.”
Changmin sits back, looking innocent. “What?”
“That... whatever it is. Thrall. Compulsion.” Yunho shakes his head, trying to dislodge the images. “You made me forget you when I was nine. Now you’re putting sexy thoughts into my head. Don’t do it.”
“Very well.” Changmin sounds smug. “I won’t do it again. I promise.”
Yunho glowers at him. “A vampire’s promise.”
That seems to wound Changmin. He looks offended, lifts his chin. “You know I keep my word. You’re too important to me.”
“As a food source,” Yunho snaps. He half turns away from Changmin and tries to settle back onto the sofa, reaching for the remote control again.
“I know you don’t believe me, but it is more than that.”
Yunho isn’t in the mood. “You’re right. I don’t believe you.”
Before Yunho can turn the TV back on, Changmin reaches out and puts a hand over his injured wrist. “I could have killed you when you were nine years old. You were all alone. No one would have saved you. I could have taken you and drained you right there and then.”
Yunho meets his gaze. He remembers that day, the snow, the terror, the stench of blood on the fur of Changmin’s coat, the confusion when he woke up alone and Siwon had gone. He swallows. “I had four years’ worth of aconite in me. Good job you didn’t do it.”
Changmin makes a dismissive sound. “Four years’ worth of aconite would have been painful, but it wouldn’t have had any long-lasting effects. I had just dined very well-so well, in fact, that I was drunk on it.”
The reference to the slaughter makes Yunho feel sick. “So that was why you spared me. Because you were glutted on the blood of Siwon’s family.”
Changmin laughs, the sound utterly without amusement. “I could have stolen you away and kept you locked up until I was hungry.”
“Why didn’t you?”
A strange expression crosses Changmin’s face. “I don’t know.” He looks uncertain. “I wanted to wait. I wanted you to be older. I wanted it to be... mutual.”
Yunho stares at him, emotion rising like a spring tide. He knows Changmin is speaking the truth; he can see it in the look of bewildered wonder in Changmin’s eyes, and he can’t do this, he can’t deal with any of it any more.
Yunho gets off the sofa and walks out of the apartment. He punches the button for the lift, then when Changmin starts to follow him, he pushes through the doors to the stairwell and clatters down the steps, ignoring Changmin’s pleas to come back.
He has no fixed thought in his mind. He just wants to get away, wants some space. At the bottom of the staircase he shoves at the emergency exit and steps out onto the street. He hasn’t been outside in days, and it feels strange, fresh air, sunlight, the bite of the cold through his jacket and t-shirt. His shoes feel heavy on his feet, the leather chafing his bare skin. He has no idea where he’s going. He just walks and walks, trying to unleash some of the feelings trapped inside him.
He’s gone half a mile before he realises he’s in love with Changmin.
The realisation brings him to his knees. Yunho puts a hand over his mouth. Wonders how he could have been so blind, so insensible to his own emotions for all this time. He’s in love, and he doesn’t know if this is the greatest moment of his life or the absolute worst.
The pavement is cold and hard beneath his knees. Slowly he becomes aware of passers-by staring at him. In a minute someone will probably come over and ask him if he’s all right, and he won’t know what to say.
A silver-blue Mercedes roadster draws up beside him. The door opens. Changmin is leaning across, looking at him with that same gentle, bewildered wonder. “Yunho,” he says. “Please.”
There’s no compulsion necessary. Not now; not ever again. Yunho gets to his feet and climbs into the car.
* * *
Part 5 >>
It’s after dinner and they’re sitting in Changmin’s car, parked along the Han River like any other courting couple, looking at the lights across the bridge and watching the water flow past.
Changmin smiles. “What’s the punch line?”
“I don’t know. I’m not good at telling jokes. I always laugh too much.” Yunho snuggles down into his jacket. The evening isn’t cold, but there’s a breeze from the water. “I always thought this was a romantic thing to do, but I never found the time to do it before.” He glances at Changmin. “I guess now I get to ask that cliché question: Do you come here often?”
“The river? Yes.” Changmin gazes through the windscreen. “Some things don’t change. Peripherally they do-the buildings, the industry, the pollution-but the river is still here. It’s still flowing. That’s a comfort.” He turns to look at Yunho. “Why did you never bring anyone here?”
Yunho shrugs, embarrassed. “I don’t know. I hadn’t met the right person.”
Changmin snorts. Resumes staring at the river. “Then why did you insist on coming down here now?”
Yunho says nothing.
Realisation arrives a few seconds later. Changmin turns back to him, startled and angry, his eyes black with emotion. “Are you mocking me?”
“No.” Yunho reaches out, then stops. “You’re the only person I would want to bring here.”
Changmin stares at him, prickly and tense. “Why? Because my tragic past moved you to so much pity?”
The events and revelations of the past few days roll together, gathering pace and crushing everything in their path, and Yunho snaps. “God forbid anyone should care. You can manage the pity part all by yourself.” He grabs at the door handle with his injured arm and snarls at the backwash of pain. Frustrated, he turns so he can use his left hand, but before he can get the door open, the locks snap shut.
“Don’t go,” Changmin says.
Keeping his fingers curled around the handle, Yunho says, “Unlock it.”
“If I do, you’ll leave.”
Yunho looks back over his shoulder. “Try me.”
Changmin’s expression gives away nothing.
“Trust me,” Yunho says, softly.
Changmin unlocks the doors.
Yunho lets go of the handle, turns and shifts across the seat towards him. Close, closer. Changmin lifts his gloved hands and touches Yunho’s face, strokes with his fingertips, slides his leather-clad thumb over Yunho’s lips. Yunho dips his head slightly, catches at the seam on the glove with his teeth and tugs at it playfully. Changmin pushes a little, and Yunho sucks the thumb into his mouth. The scent and taste of fresh leather fill his senses; the texture of it on his tongue excites him. He can feel the warmth of Changmin’s thumb beneath the covering; he can feel the fluttering of Changmin’s fingers against his cheek.
Changmin makes a sound. Withdraws his thumb. He places his gloved hand over Yunho’s mouth and kisses him.
It’s the strangest kiss Yunho has ever received; the strangest kiss he’s ever given. He closes his eyes, mouths at the leather-clad palm as Changmin kisses the back of his own hand. They press closer together, Changmin cradling the side of Yunho’s head, holding him into the embrace. It’s weird. It’s hot. Yunho runs his good hand over Changmin’s thighs. Maybe they can do this without touching bare skin or having any contact with bodily fluids. There must be a way.
They push even closer. Changmin makes a hungry noise low in his throat. His hair tickles across Yunho’s face. Yunho adjusts the angle of his stifled kiss. A few strands of Changmin’s hair fall across his lips, catch in his mouth. Within seconds the hair is singeing, disintegrating, leaving the taste of bitter ash on his tongue.
They break apart, breathing hard. Changmin yanks out the strands of burning hair, a queasy look on his face, then he ruffles his gloved hand through his fringe.
Yunho leans back against the seat and exhales, trying to calm the insistent throb of arousal running through him.
After an endless moment of silence, Changmin says, “I would remember if I’d compelled you just now.”
He sounds bewildered, as if surprised that Yunho wanted to kiss him. He seems so taken aback that Yunho laughs. “Is it so hard to imagine that someone might actually like you?”
“I slaughtered your best friend’s family.”
“And he fed me poison every day of my life since I was a child.” Yunho turns his head and smiles a little. “You’re both as bad as each other.”
“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Changmin says.
“But in mathematics, two negatives make a positive.”
Changmin gives him another puzzled look. “You’re trying to like me.”
“And you’re trying to court me.” Yunho stares out at the river. “I thought I’d meet you halfway.”
“I could kill you.”
“Ditto.”
They sit in silence. The breeze picks up, ghosts over them.
Yunho shivers. “It’s my life,” he says quietly. “My decision. I realised that if I do what Siwon wants and keep on taking the poison for the rest of my days, I run the risk of harming even more people. I would have to resign myself to being alone. I don’t like being alone. I like people, I like hanging out and talking; I like making love, I like kissing. I can’t be close to anyone while I’m toxic. But if I stop taking the aconite, you’ll kill me. And I’m okay with that, because I know it’s nothing personal-it’s just the vampire catnip thing. Then I wondered how long you’d wait, given that you’ve waited sixteen years already. And I thought if I took the wolfsbane a bit longer, maybe I can’t ever have a normal life, but at least I wouldn’t be lonely, because I’d have you.”
Changmin exhales a soft laugh. “I thought I was devious.”
Yunho looks at him. “I’m selfish. You can say it.”
“No. You’re not.” Changmin’s voice is rich with emotion, his eyes black with intensity. “You’re the least selfish person I’ve encountered.”
Yunho drops his gaze. “I don’t want to die yet. I want something real. Something just for me.”
There’s another silence, and then suddenly Changmin yanks at the door and gets out of the car. He walks away, his body rigid. His boots crunch across the gravel, thud on the concrete of the footpath. He stands by the side of the river, head bowed, hair stirred by the breeze.
Yunho wonders if he’s made the wrong choice. Even if he has, he won’t regret his decision. He doesn’t believe in regrets.
Long moments later, Changmin comes back. He strides to Yunho’s side of the car and curls his gloved hands over the top of the door, gripping tight. He stares down at Yunho with fury and wonder. “Why?” he asks. “Why are you so good?”
Yunho doesn’t know how to respond. He shrugs, grasps at the first thing that comes to mind. “Because I’m a shaman? Aren’t shamans supposed to be mediators?”
Changmin laughs, the sound disbelieving and wild. “If it wouldn’t burn my cock off, I’d take you right here and now on the hood of the car.”
Lust punches into Yunho. He claws the fingernails of his good hand into his palm. “I’d like that. You fucking me on the car in public, I mean. Not the other thing. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Changmin stares. “You have no idea how much I want to kiss you.”
Yunho lets out a frustrated sigh. “Yeah, well. We can’t do that. Wolfsbane, the greatest cockblock known to man or vampire.”
A short laugh breaks from Changmin. He lets go of the car door and swings away, goes a few paces before he turns, walks around the front of the Mercedes, and climbs back inside. He puts both hands on the wheel but makes no attempt to start the engine.
Yunho tips back his head and gazes up at the night sky, the stars muffled by light pollution. “I want to know everything about you.”
Changmin slants him a watchful look. “I’ll tell you everything. Just ask.”
“Siwon’s ancestor,” Yunho says. “The Jesuit. Tell me about him. How did he come to put the binding spell on you?”
The keys rattle in the ignition as Changmin leans forward. “You must be cold,” he says, flicking a switch so the soft-top slides out and folds up and over them. They’re silent while it happens, and when they’re cocooned within the car, it seems even quieter, even darker than before.
Changmin doesn’t look at him. “After Princess Sukhwi died, I was... different. I went mad with grief. I killed anyone and everyone who stood in my path. Everyone, regardless of age, gender, or innocence. It was indiscriminate butchery. It helped fill the void, but the more I killed, the more I wanted to kill. Bloodlust, I suppose you’d call it. Some sort of never-ending berserker rage, only it was not anger that drove me, but pain.”
Yunho listens, trying to imagine the amount of anguish suffered by Changmin and his victims, his heart aching for all the souls taken and destroyed so easily.
“Around this time,” Changmin continues, “I discovered there was a name for what I had become. I found that I was not the only such monster to have been made. There were others, though none had been created by magic like me. Some were the vengeful dead; some were raised by mischance because a cat had crossed their corpse. Others were created by the bite and blood of an older vampire. From them I learned that there were rules to ensure the balance of nature. For instance, I could not enter an enclosed private dwelling without invitation, but the palace was open to me because so many people passed through it. I was created from all five elements, but the ones that rule me are Earth and Fire. My weaknesses are Wood and Water; my balance is Metal. I took as much information from others of my kind, and then I killed them all.”
“Why?” Yunho asks softly.
Changmin raises an eyebrow. “Why does a madman do anything? I did it because I could. I was stronger than them, faster than them. I was born from a shaman’s magic. I thought myself better than them.”
Yunho shakes his head but offers no comment.
“You would judge me?” Changmin stares at him through the darkness. “I wouldn’t blame you. Be disgusted with me. Be appalled by my actions. I was worse than an animal.”
“Any animal, if wounded, will lash out at those around it,” Yunho says.
“Don’t try to excuse my behaviour.” Changmin taps the fingers of one hand against the steering wheel. “Don’t forget that if I could, I would tear out your throat and drain you of every last drop of blood your body holds until you were nothing but a desiccated husk-and there would be no excuse for that beyond greed.”
Yunho puts his good hand to his neck. He can feel his pulse thrumming.
Changmin laughs without humour. “But to return to the past... My savagery was so widespread across the capital that the King went into hiding. He summoned his ministers, who summoned the religious leaders, who devised a way of binding me. They brought together a shaman, a Buddhist, a Taoist, and a Christian. After conversing with the spirits, the shaman said that Lord Jeong’s son had in his possession a silver pendant that had been discovered on the floor of my cell when the Mu woman and I were found dead.”
“Silver,” Yunho interrupts. “There was an old silver coin used in the spell that turned you.”
“Yes. And now you see why Metal is my balance.” Changmin slides his fingers over the steering wheel and grips tight, the soft leather of his glove creaking. “The silver coin was cast into the pendant. The pendant contains my soul. Or at least, it contains one of them.”
Yunho blinks. “You have more than one soul?”
Changmin nods. “We all have two souls, the hun and the po. Unholy creatures-vampires-we are driven by po, the yin or corporeal soul. It makes us dark; it demands that we feed on base emotions. The silver pendant contains my hun, my yang, ethereal soul. Splitting the two souls made me a monster. Anyone in possession of my hun soul and with the ability to call upon the spirits would have power over me. They could bind me. That’s what they did, Siwon’s ancestor and his colleagues. They bound me with my own soul.”
The wind rises, dashing a few leaves against the side of the car. Yunho fixes his gaze on the river, stares at the lights reflected in the black water. He thinks about two souls in one body. Doubtless Siwon and Pastor Lee would reject such a notion, but he can believe it. The ghosts he saw as a child must be formed from either hun or po. Yes, he believes it. He turns to face Changmin. “What did they do to you?”
“The procedure was simple.” Changmin grimaces. “They lured me into a forest and hemmed me in with a circle of fire. Half buried in the earth at my feet was a wooden bowl of water containing the silver pendant. They cast the spell, a four-way binding to limit my power and contain my rage. I am still swift, I am still strong, but I possess only a fifth of the speed and strength I once had. Instead of acting without thought, I must now think before I act. The spell at once made me less dangerous and more deadly.”
Changmin smiles. “With a four-way spell, the possibilities for ambiguity are so much greater. Only the Jesuit saw the loopholes in the incantations of his colleagues. Only he made the necessary adjustments to his invocation to the saints-a prayer built on top of the binding spell. It’s this additional prayer-spell that stops me from extinguishing that line of the Choi family and prevents me from being free.”
Yunho considers this. “So your hun soul is inside the silver pendant, and they placed the binding spell on the pendant.”
“Yes. The four who cast the spell were supposed to take turns in guarding the pendant, but I killed three of them. Thanks to his treachery, the Jesuit escaped, taking with him my hun. The Choi family has it still, and until I get it back, I will keep killing them every few generations. In return, they loathe and despise me and would see me destroyed.”
“Siwon mentioned something about that.” Yunho looks down at his injured arm. “That’s where I’m supposed to come in. You drink my blood, I poison you, you burn up, Siwon cuts off your head and dismembers you.”
“A crude yet effective method.” Changmin snorts. “Destroying my physical body is all very well, but my hun would remain and so, technically, I could haunt them. My po, without a human form, would wander around in search of my hun. There must be balance in all things. To end me, they must destroy both souls simultaneously-and so most of the time, I stay far away from that family until I feel like herding them together for slaughter.”
Yunho rubs a hand through his hair. “Knowing Siwon’s family, I’m surprised no one tried to capture you in the past three hundred years.”
Changmin is silent for a long time. “They need something else,” he says at last. “The Chois have no supernatural gifts. They don’t have the ability to destroy me completely even if they had both me and my hun in one place. They need...” He hesitates. Flicks a look at Yunho. Continues softly, “They need someone who can call upon the spirits.”
Understanding hits Yunho with sudden, devastating force. “A shaman.”
“Not just any shaman.” Changmin looks at him with a terrible smile. “A male shaman in full possession of his powers. They need you.”
*
The drive back to Yunho’s apartment is filled with quiet, simmering tension. Yunho doesn’t know what to say to break the silence, and it seems as if Changmin is angry, somehow. Perhaps he’s regretting everything he’s said. Perhaps he feels too open, too vulnerable.
Changmin walks him up to the fourth floor and opens the apartment door.
Yunho crosses the threshold and stands in the hallway, looking at him. “Why did you tell me about the pendant-about me being the one who could destroy you?”
Changmin flicks his hair from his eyes. “Because you told me about the wolfsbane. It seemed only fair to offer you something in return.”
“That’s not it,” Yunho says without thinking.
“Isn’t it?” Changmin tilts his head, gaze darkening. “Then tell me why I did it.”
Yunho takes a step back. “You can come in.”
“I don’t need your permission.” Changmin stays outside in the hallway. The light is indifferent, a flickering fluorescent strip that buzzes and stutters occasionally into silence. It makes Changmin look pale and tired, his eyes shadowed. He leans against the doorframe the way he did yesterday, when he was waiting for Yunho to invite him in. The hope has gone from his expression. Now he’s just weary.
Yunho thinks he’d give almost anything to be able to hold him. To stop himself from reaching out, he tucks his thumbs into the back pockets of his jeans. “What would you do if you regained your hun?”
“What would I do.” Changmin shifts his weight and leans to one side, resting his head against the doorframe. “I would decide whether I wanted to continue existing as a vampire or if I should live out the rest of my natural lifespan as a human.”
It’s not the answer Yunho was expecting. “Do you want to be human again?”
Changmin gives him a glittering look. “I want the choice to decide.”
Yunho nods. He can understand that desire. Maybe he can understand it more than most. His own situation is nowhere near as complicated-he can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like to choose between being immortal or mortal-but he supposes it’s not really about that. It’s the fact that, right now and for the past three hundred-odd years, Changmin has had no choice.
“Your hun,” he says, voice quiet. “The silver pendant. What does it look like?”
“I don’t know.” Changmin looks exhausted and dispirited. “I searched the house the day I killed Siwon’s family, the same way I always search the house every time I massacre the Chois, but I couldn’t find it. I don’t know what it looks like now. It might not even be a pendant any more-the sensible thing would have been to melt it down as soon as the binding spell was cast, and form the silver into something else. For all I know, my soul inhabits a set of sugar spoons.”
“Siwon’s family has never had sugar spoons,” Yunho says. “It’s your soul, can’t you feel it?”
Changmin makes an annoyed sound. “Do you think it calls out to me? ‘Changmin, I’m over here’? No. I’ll know it when I touch it, but until then...”
Yunho takes his hands out of his pockets and squares his shoulders. “Maybe I would know. If I’m such a shit-hot shaman-”
This brings a ghost of a smile to Changmin’s lips. “You are.”
“If I am, then maybe I can find it for you.”
Silence burns between them. The light in the corridor flickers, on-off-on. Changmin lifts his head. “Why would you do that?”
Yunho swallows; glances away for a moment. “Because I don’t want you to kill any more of Siwon’s family.”
“I can’t kill him,” Changmin reminds him gently, “and you have my word that I won’t harm his future wife and their darling children, or his adorable grandchildren. By the time I’m ready to commit mass murder again, you won’t be here. So why do you care about Siwon’s descendants?
“Because,” Yunho says. “Because it’s wrong to keep on taking revenge just because you can.”
Changmin looks at him. “It’s a means to an end. They can stop their own suffering by giving me back my hun.”
“It’s not just that.” Yunho meets his gaze. “I worry about your suffering, too.”
* * *
Exactly a week since Yunho’s first disastrous date with Changmin and the swift unravelling of everything he’s known, Siwon finally calls.
“Is this a bad time?” Siwon asks when Yunho answers the phone.
Yunho hesitates; flicks a look at Changmin seated opposite him. They’ve just finished lunch and are lingering over coffee, the rest of the afternoon waiting for them to decide what to do with it. Siwon’s call is long overdue, but Yunho wishes he hadn’t picked this exact moment. He doesn’t want this conversation in front of Changmin, who’s watching him with a wary yet smug expression.
It makes Yunho feel like a bone fought over by two dogs, and the image is enough to make him want to hang up and do this later, but instead he says, “It’s okay.”
“Good.” Now it’s Siwon’s turn to hesitate. “Yunho,” he says. Pauses. There’s the sound of paper shuffling in the background. “Yun,” he begins again, “I’m going to America. I’m moving to Los Angeles. I want you to come with me.”
“What?” Yunho’s grip on the phone tightens. Of all the things Siwon could have said, this is the most unexpected. Surprise rolls around Yunho’s head; anger is swift to follow. “When? When were you going to tell me about this?”
“I’m leaving on Tuesday.” Siwon takes a quick breath. “I know it doesn’t give you much time-”
“Not much time?” Yunho hears his voice climb in tone and volume. Changmin is frowning, eyes gone narrow and black. He doesn’t want to deal with Changmin on top of this right now, so he shuffles around in his chair and fixes his gaze outside the restaurant window.
“It’s not like you’ve got much to leave behind,” Siwon says, sounding defensive. “You’re signed off work because of your wrist so if you resigned, they could find someone to replace you. It’s not like your apartment is that great and I can come round and help you pack, or if you want, I can get professionals in who’ll do it for you, and-”
“No. Stop.” Yunho waves his injured hand as if he can cut the flow of Siwon’s words. The food he ate at lunch sits uneasily in his stomach. He feels hot and confused. “Why? Siwon, why?”
Siwon is silent for a moment, then says, “I’ve always wanted you to work with me. This is a really good opportunity. Opening a North American office will take a lot of effort, and you’re the hardest-working person I know. You’re perfect for this job. And I’m sorry I didn’t give you more of an advance warning, but you said you didn’t want to see me for a while after... after what happened, and I wanted to respect that. But now I’m telling you-I’m asking you-please come with me.”
Yunho twists at his hair. He closes his eyes. “No, Siwon. Tell me why.”
The silence is longer this time, and then Siwon says, “Because you’re my best friend and I need you.”
Opposite him, Changmin leans forward, his hands flat on the table and his eyes blazing.
Yunho tries to ignore him. “Is it because of what I found out last week?”
“No!” Siwon sounds upset. “It’s not about that. Not all about it, anyway. Yun, don’t you see? This is the chance for us to make a new start. To get away from everything that’s been holding us back. My family’s past, the-the vampire thing, all the rest of it... We can go to America and forget about it.”
The passion in Siwon’s voice is sincere. It’s as if he really believes this. As if he can sweep it all away without fully dealing with the consequences of his actions. Yunho doesn’t know if he envies him or pities him, but he’s furious that Siwon seems to think that nothing’s changed, that Yunho will go along with his plans just because.
“I can’t forget,” Yunho says, keeping his tone level. “If you want to forget, that’s fine, but don’t ever think for one moment that I will.”
“Yun...” Siwon draws in a breath. “Where are you? I’ll come right away and we can talk. Let me explain.”
Yunho shakes his head, even though Siwon can’t see him. “There’s nothing to explain. I understand why you poisoned me, Siwon, I understand.”
“You hate me.” Siwon’s voice catches.
“I don’t.” Suddenly this is a much harder conversation than he’d anticipated. Yunho slumps over the table, pushing his coffee cup aside. “I couldn’t ever hate you.”
“Then please come with me,” Siwon begs. “Let me make things right.”
“You can’t.” The world has turned dull; Yunho doesn’t want to be disappointed, he doesn’t want this to hurt so much, but his heart aches. “I understand why you did it. But that doesn’t take away the fact that I’m responsible for causing people to get sick. I’m responsible for a man’s death.”
Across the table, Changmin gives him a curious, sharp glance.
Siwon tries to protest, but Yunho hasn’t finished. “I know you’ll tell me that none of those things are my fault because I didn’t know I was toxic. Is ignorance really an excuse? You kept me ignorant all that time. Is your life worth more than Private Kam’s?”
Siwon is silent.
“You should have told me. Right from the start, you should have told me. You were my friend, my best friend, and you kept this from me.”
“Would you have done it?” Siwon sounds husky with emotion. “Would you have taken the pills for me if I’d told you the truth?”
“Yes.” Yunho’s face is wet with tears. He splays the fingers of his free hand, hides behind them and turns his face, leans into his phone. “Yes, because I loved you. You were closer than a brother. I would have done anything for you. Anything to keep you safe. But you should have told me. You should have given me the choice. I can forgive you everything but that.”
Silence. Then Siwon says, very softly, “I’m sorry.”
Yunho sniffs and scrubs at his cheeks, drying his tears. “I’m not coming with you. I’m staying here.” He clears his throat, regaining his scattered control, trying to detach himself. “If you would do one thing before you go... Visit my parents and say goodbye. They’ll be sorry to see you leave. You know my mother adores you.”
“I’ll visit.” Siwon sounds small. “Yun, if you would do one thing for me, too...”
“What?”
Siwon pauses for a heartbeat. “Keep taking the vitamin pills.”
Yunho swallows the burst of hysteria that threatens. “The poison, Siwon. You mean you want me to keep taking the poison.”
“It’s important.” Now Siwon sounds anxious. “The monster can’t follow me across saltwater, but if you won’t come with me, then you’re vulnerable and I-we can’t protect each other.”
Yunho laughs, but it feels like his heart is shattering. “That’s what you’re saying now? That we’re mutually protecting one another?”
“Please.” Siwon’s begging. “I’ll arrange for more of the pills to be delivered. Please, Yun. It’s the only way you’ll stay safe.”
It’s on the tip of Yunho’s tongue to tell him to fuck off straight to hell, but he can’t bring himself to say it. “Goodbye, Siwon. Be happy and successful and never contact me again.”
“Yunho,” Siwon shouts down the phone. “Yunho, don’t-”
Yunho cuts the call, turns the phone over, and takes out the battery. He stares at the two pieces for a moment, then says, “I need a new phone.”
Changmin reaches across the table. Lifts the empty shell of the phone. Crushes it into bits. “You do now.”
Laughter bubbles up, hot and rancid. Yunho giggles, then puts a hand over his mouth before he can start crying again. He’s shaking. He shifts his gaze and looks out of the window until he feels calmer.
“I take it you heard the whole thing,” he says after a while.
“Yes.” Changmin brushes the pile of plastic and metal into the middle of the table and looks at him. “You are far too good for this world.”
Yunho ignores that. He doesn’t feel good. He feels like shit. “So it’s true what he said about saltwater?”
Changmin nods. “One of the limitations of the binding spell.” He fiddles with the broken pieces of the phone, not looking up. “You could have gone with him.”
“What for? At least I can trust you.”
That gives Changmin pause. He tilts his head, lips parting. “You trust me?”
Yunho picks up his mostly cold coffee. “You’re honest. I know you want to drain my catnip blood. I know that’ll kill me. You haven’t lied to me. So yes, I trust you.”
Changmin reaches across the table and lays his hand over Yunho’s bandaged wrist. “Stop taking the wolfsbane.”
The coffee tastes awful, the scent of it too strong now. Yunho grimaces and puts down the cup. “I’ll get sick. The doctor said-”
“You’re a shaman. Stop taking it.” Changmin gazes at him, absolutely serious. “What you said the other night by the river-I will wait. However long it takes, I’ll wait. I won’t leave. If you want to take the aconite for another twenty years, I’ll still be here. But know that it won’t kill you to stop taking the pills, and if you stop taking them, it’ll still be a few years before the poison leaves your system. It’ll be years before I can-” He stops himself, face pale and tense.
Yunho drops his gaze and stares into the cup at the dried ring of milk foam and the dregs of the coffee. “You and Siwon both talk about me being a shaman, but I don’t see any evidence of it.”
“The aconite,” Changmin says. “You’re not dead.”
“Apart from that.”
Changmin smiles, starts to relax. “The glass. In the restaurant on our date last week. You smashed it just by looking at it.”
Yunho pushes the cup away. “I thought I could see blood in it.”
“You could see blood,” Changmin tells him. “Just as you could see me in the mirror all those years ago. And the ghosts in the walls in Siwon’s house, and the memory-impressions of the killings.”
Yunho laughs without humour. “Those are kind of crappy powers, really. Proper shamans do rituals for good harvests and things like that. They deliver spirit-messages to the living. They heal people. I’ve only made people sick and one guy even died because of me.”
“Because of the wolfsbane,” Changmin says softly but with emphasis.
“Same difference.” Yunho glares at him. “If I’m a shaman then why couldn’t I heal those people? If poison and cure both exist inside me, shouldn’t they cancel each other out somehow?”
“Maybe if you were in full possession of your powers. But you’re not.”
Yunho sits back. Shakes his head.
They’re silent for a while, watching the bustle of the restaurant, then Changmin says, “Do you ever hear things-wing-beats?”
“Yes.” Yunho thinks about it, remembering all the times he’s heard that sound, how sometimes it drowned out everything else, and he realises he hasn’t heard it in a while. A week, to be precise. “Not so much these past few days, but... yes.”
“That’s the sound of the spirits.” Changmin gives him a half smile. “They hate me. They’re afraid of what I’ll do to you. A vampire and a shaman, that’s-” He stops himself again.
“What?” Yunho frowns at him. “What were you going to say?”
Changmin deflects the question. “You could be immensely powerful. You could summon and control the dead. That’s a terrifying prospect. But first your power needs to be triggered.”
Yunho wrinkles his nose. “How?”
“I don’t know, truly. It’s different for each shaman. Your power manifested through sickness when you were a child. Shamans in every culture endure near-death experiences, sometimes more than once. It gives them the knowledge of the spirit world. They have to experience sickness in order to be able to heal.” Changmin pauses, then continues, “It’s inside you, waiting for you to tap into it. But it’s sealed up as a way of protecting you and everyone around you. When you’re ready to deal with the power and its consequences, it’ll unlock. Something will trigger it, and...”
“And?”
Changmin looks at him. “Not even I would stand in your way.”
* * *
The next morning, Yunho takes only one of the aconite pills. He goes through the day expecting to feel different, but he doesn’t. Stupid, really; it’s just one pill less. He takes only one pill the next day, too, and the day after that, and on Tuesday, the day Siwon is leaving for America, Yunho seals the yellow pill bottle in layers of packing tape and throws it into the bin.
He feels fine. He’d expected some sort of withdrawal symptoms, but it looks like Changmin was right. His super-special shamanic blood is probably starting to cleanse the decades of accumulated poison out of his system at that very moment.
Yunho decides that, since he feels fine, he’ll go and talk to his boss about returning to work. It’ll be another six weeks before the fracture heals completely, and so he won’t be able to carry heavy trays around, but there’ll be other duties to which he can attend.
“You don’t like my company?” Changmin asks, teasing, when Yunho says he’s going back to work.
“Of course I do,” Yunho says, quite seriously. “Siwon used to come and see me in the coffee shop every day. You can do the same, if you want.”
Changmin gives him a hot-eyed look. “I am not Siwon.”
Four days after Yunho starts back at work, Jooyeon nudges up to him at the end of the midmorning rush and says, “Are you all right? You look kind of washed-out. Is your wrist hurting?”
Yunho lifts his bandaged arm, turns it slightly. It hasn’t been painful for the past few days or so. “It seems okay.” He smiles at her. “I’ll be fine.”
She doesn’t seem convinced, giving him an uncertain look as she goes off to take an order. Yunho keeps the smile on his face and studies his hand. He twitches his fingers, watches them move slightly. The skin is a dull colour, almost grey under the lights. Though he can move his fingers, he can’t actually feel them. That’s weird.
A customer comes up to pay. Yunho taps at the keys on the till-it took a while to get used to doing it left-handed, but he’s pretty good at it now-and then he stares at the register in bewilderment. From force of habit he’d reckoned the total of the customer’s bill in his head, but the till display is showing him a different figure. “I’m sorry,” he says to the customer, “this isn’t the correct amount. Let me do that again.”
He voids the sale and starts afresh. His fingers keep slipping on the keypad. He has no sensation in the fingertips of his left hand.
Trying to keep his anxiety at bay, he voids the sale a second time and does a manual override, not wanting to keep the customer waiting any longer. His hand feels like it’s a lump of lead. He has to use every scrap of concentration to take the money, push it into the till drawers, and select the change.
Jooyeon comes back, her expression worried. “You look terrible.”
“I’m-” He wants to say he’s fine, but cold, clawing nausea grips at him and almost doubles him over.
Jooyeon pushes him towards the kitchen, clucking with concern. “Sit down. Take ten minutes, we’re not busy.”
Yunho stumbles into the kitchen and leans against the wall, taking deep breaths to quell the sickness roiling in his stomach. His throat is dry. He’s sweating. He can smell it, the sweat and panic, and it makes him want to vomit. He groans, turns his head to press his cheek against the tiled wall.
A few more deep breaths. He starts to feel better. The world snaps back into focus. He can hear the murmur of conversation from the shop, the click and hiss of the espresso and steamed milk machines, the scent of coffee and syrups and cakes and-
Nausea hits him so fast he can barely keep upright. His stomach lurches and he runs for the nearest sink, bends down into it and throws up. He gropes for the tap, turns it on. He can see the water running, but he can’t feel it. His vision is blackening around the edges, pointillist dots encroaching upon him. There are wing-beats in his head, fast and rapid, gathering, flurrying.
Yunho tries to keep calm, but inside he’s terrified. Numbness in the extremities. Nausea. Vomiting. He knows what this is. Aconite poisoning. He shouldn’t have gone cold turkey. He should’ve listened to the doctor. He should’ve listened to Siwon.
As if from far away, he hears Jooyeon come in, her voice playful: “Yunho, your hot customer is here-Yunho? Yunho!”
He tries to drag himself upright, wants to warn her to stay away from him. She mustn’t touch him, mustn’t try to help. He doesn’t want to poison her.
Jooyeon comes towards him, eyes wide with fright, but before she can reach him, she’s pushed aside.
Yunho keels over.
Changmin catches him. “I’ve got you,” he says, holding him close.
Yunho wants to shove him away. His shirt is soaked through with sweat, but Changmin is still holding him. He’s still holding him even though Yunho can smell the oily, sickening stench of singed flesh. He’s hurting Changmin and he can’t bear it. “Let me go,” he whispers, throat closing on the words.
Changmin only holds him tighter. “Never.”
* * *
Yunho wakes in a king-sized bed in a room that isn’t his. It’s three times bigger than his entire apartment, including the balcony, and it’s decorated in soft, muted colours and furnished to exquisite taste. For all that, it seems impersonal, more like a hotel room than someone’s intimate living space, and he’s not surprised when the door opens and Changmin comes in.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I should be dead.” Yunho tries to smile, to make light of his answer.
Changmin sinks down into an armchair close by the bed. There’s a marble-topped card table next to it; upon it is an open book laid spine upwards and tumbler of brandy. The cushion is squashed flat. It’s clear that Changmin has been watching over him for some time.
“You were very sick.” Changmin’s voice is rough. He looks tired.
Yunho stretches a little. His entire body aches with the memory of pain. It feels as if someone stuck him with red-hot needles and then flayed him. His wrist is still in plaster. He can feel again-his fingertips slide along the cool, smooth Egyptian cotton sheet-and his head is clear.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Four days.”
Yunho starts. “Four days?” He tries to push himself up onto his elbows, but just that small effort robs him of strength and brings a debilitating wave of nausea. Frustrated, he eases back onto the pillows and waits for the sickness to recede. He closes his eyes, focuses on his breathing. The sheets carry Changmin’s scent. Yunho turns his head, nuzzles deeper against the pillow, then he remembers, jerking a look at Changmin. “Your arm, your hand-you touched me and I was... I burned you.”
“All healed.” Changmin rolls back his shirtsleeve as proof, revealing flawless bare skin. He smiles. “Hurt like a bitch at the time, though.”
“What about Jooyeon?”
“I compelled her. All she remembers is that you got sick and I took you home. I talked to your boss, too, and persuaded him that you should take another couple of weeks of sick leave. He was happy to oblige.” Changmin reaches behind him and plumps the cushion, then sits back in the armchair and crosses his legs.
“A couple of weeks?” Yunho rubs his good hand through his hair. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble. Honestly, I feel better.”
Changmin snorts. “I think I preferred it when you were unconscious. You were less stubborn.” He runs a fingertip around the rim of the tumbler. “You used up all your strength fighting off the aconite poisoning. You need to rest and recuperate.”
Yunho rolls his eyes. “Then I should be in hospital. Or maybe I should start taking the pills again.”
“No.” Changmin picks up the brandy, agitates it. “This will pass.”
“What if it doesn’t?” Yunho snaps. He hates being sick. He hates this stupid, helpless feeling. He doesn’t want to be trapped here. Irrational anger boils up, overflows. Yunho shoots a glare at the tumbler in Changmin’s hand, and the glass shatters.
The brandy spills, spattering over Changmin’s cream-coloured trousers. He sits motionless, still holding what’s left of the tumbler, glittering fragments of glass around him and the rich scent of brandy in the air as the liquid soaks into the cloth.
Yunho stares. “I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’re just trying to survive.” Changmin stands up and brushes at the broken glass.
“Trying to survive so you can kill me,” Yunho amends.
Changmin stares at him. “Is that really what you think?”
In truth, Yunho doesn’t know what to think. There’s a faint pounding at his temples, like the onset of a headache, and he feels a little dizzy. Reaction to breaking the tumbler, he supposes. At least there’s no more wing-beats fluttering around his skull. He looks away as Changmin clears up the broken glass, then surreptitiously looks back again when Changmin unbuckles his belt and takes off his trousers.
Changmin smiles. “I’m quite happy for you to watch me get undressed.”
Yunho snorts in response, but wriggles back in the pillows and enjoys the view. Changmin tosses his trousers into the washing basket and opens the wardrobe, leaning forward to sort through his clothes. Yunho admires the long, lean line of Changmin’s legs, the high, round curve of his ass, and wishes he’d managed to spill brandy and broken glass on Changmin’s shirt, too.
Lazy arousal spins through him. Yunho pulls his gaze elsewhere. He looks around the room again, noting the difference between this and his own cluttered space. It’s a measure of how distracted he is that he remarks without any thought whatsoever, “You don’t have any pictures in here.”
The wardrobe door closes with a bang. “Funny, that.”
Yunho winces inwardly, but presses on: “You must have had friends. People you cared about. People you wanted to remember.”
Changmin pulls on a pair of jeans washed pale over the thighs. They’re tight enough to cling like a lover’s caress. He feeds his belt through the loops and buckles it in place, then turns to look at his reflection in the mirror and makes minor adjustments to the fall of his shirt.
The silence doesn’t deter Yunho. It just makes him even more curious. “Have you ever turned someone-made them into a vampire?”
Changmin leans closer to the mirror, his expression unreadable. “Three hundred and seventy years is a long time to be alone.”
“Then you did. You made a vampire.” Yunho sits up. “Where are they?”
“I made four,” Changmin says. “They’re all dead.”
“Dead?”
“I killed them.” Changmin turns from the mirror, keeping his back to Yunho. “They were... broken.”
Yunho shakes his head. “In what way?”
Changmin is silent for a while. Yunho stares at him, at the tension in his back, across his shoulders, the unguarded emotion evident in the way he bows his head. Finally Changmin exhales. He turns to face Yunho. His eyes are black. “Remember I told you there were different types of vampire-some made by magic, some through accident, some for vengeance...”
Yunho nods.
“For those who are created through the bite and blood of an older vampire-” Changmin stops, his gaze sliding away again, becoming distant with memory. “It turns out that only certain bloodlines can adapt to the change. The people I chose were from the wrong families. They did not transform well. I had to end their agony.”
The idea of it is horrifying. Changmin has suffered so much; not only did he lose a beloved child, but his attempts at making a companion had also ended in grief. Yunho hugs his knees. “Which are the right bloodlines?”
Changmin looks back at him, gaze steady. “The shamanic families.”
There’s a moment of silence as Yunho absorbs this, and then he says, “You mean-”
“You would be magnificent,” Changmin says softly, his eyes kindling with some new emotion.
Another silence. Yunho is conscious of the beat of his heart, the flutter of his pulse. “Is that what you’ll do to me once the aconite is out of my system?” He doesn’t know if the prospect thrills him or terrifies him. He doesn’t know what answer he wants to receive. “Changmin, are you going to turn me?”
“I don’t know.” A look of terrible uncertainty crosses Changmin’s face. “It depends how well I can resist the lure of your blood. It’s physically painful for me to keep my distance now, while you’re still full of poison. As the aconite leaves your body, you’ll become more and more of a temptation. I might not be able to wait. I might run the risk of being weakened for the next one hundred years. I might just kill you.”
* * *
It takes a week before Yunho swaps the bed for the sofa. He falls asleep a lot, usually in the middle of a daytime drama or wildlife documentary, and often wakes to find a blanket over him and the television turned off, and Changmin curled up in the chair opposite, watching him.
“Sleep is the best healer,” Changmin says with quiet authority whenever Yunho apologises for being so boring.
The aconite poisoning has slowed Yunho more than he expected. He remembers it took a while for him to recover from the first round of sickness when he was a child, but now the physical restrictions chafe at him and make him short-tempered. It’s as if he’s reverted to being nine years old, and he feels whiny and sorry for himself. This in itself is a novel but unpleasant experience. He’s so used to sharing his company with others that he’s not sure what to do with himself now he has so much time alone.
Changmin goes out a lot at first.
“It’s nothing personal,” he says, his unblinking black gaze fixed on Yunho’s throat, or the inside of his elbow, or his wrist. Sometimes Changmin’s fangs slide out, sharp and glistening, and when that happens he moans quietly and clenches his hands into fists, takes shuddering breaths to calm himself.
And yet at other times, it seems easy for Changmin to be near him, and on those days Changmin’s eyes are their usual soft, deep brown and he seems relaxed, happy to sit close on the sofa as they watch a film together.
It takes Yunho a while to work out why this might be.
One afternoon Yunho is sitting on the couch, toying with the frayed hems of his jeans and half watching a kids’ TV show. A pile of manga is stacked on the coffee table-gifts from Changmin, and all of the volumes sequential. He’s in that state of mind that’s neither here nor there, bored and yet without knowledge of what he should be doing instead, and his mood is vacillating.
“Here.” Changmin hands him a mug of tea, lime blossom and ginseng, and sits beside him. After a moment, he reaches out, caresses Yunho’s ankle. A heartbeat later, he draws Yunho’s foot into his lap and lets it rest there. Changmin smiles, delighted with his own daring. His skin is flushed; his eyes gleam. Heat radiates from his body.
Yunho wriggles his foot, stroking his toes over the heavy cotton of Changmin’s trousers, then pressing against the hard muscle of his thigh. The bizarrely costumed presenters on the TV show break into song while shuffling around in a strange dance. Yunho drinks his tea, the scent sweet and familiar, and then realisation hits him. He puts down the mug so fast that tea slops over the side.
Changmin sits forward, immediately concerned. “Are you all right?”
Yunho withdraws his foot from Changmin’s lap and squashes into the corner of the sofa, unease thumping inside him. “I just realised. Oh God, I’m so stupid.”
“What?” Changmin looks confused. “What is it?”
“When you can bear to be close to me like this. I just realised how you can do it and not want to rip my throat out.” Yunho sees Changmin’s eyes flicker and knows he’s guessed right. “Oh, shit. You are, aren’t you. You’re going out and feeding on people to stop yourself from wanting to snack on me.”
Changmin’s lips part, but he doesn’t deny it. He looks at Yunho from beneath the sweep of his fringe. “This is what I am. This is what I need to do.”
Yunho jabs at the remote control and switches off the television. “Fuck.”
“I can wait for you, but I have to eat,” Changmin says, and he sounds so reasonable, as if he’s talking about a normal meal and not human blood. “Please believe me when I tell you that I never take more than I need. Not now. I don’t hurt them. I always compel them afterwards. They’ll never remember.”
That stirs a memory loose. Yunho frowns, gestures with his bandaged arm. “Those guys who attacked me. Did you-”
“I wasn’t gentle with them.” Changmin growls, his expression darkening. “I told you: I’m impulsive. Besides, they hurt you.”
Yunho snorts, more disturbed by this revelation than he thought he’d be. “Like you care about me.”
“I do.” Changmin flicks back his hair and meets Yunho’s gaze.
They stare at one another until Yunho glances away and mutters, “Only because I’m your catnip.”
Changmin laughs. “If you had a prize stallion, would you let it wander the streets or would you keep it safe?”
Yunho slants him an annoyed look. “I’m not a horse.”
“I’d like to ride you.” Changmin leans closer, his smile wicked and inviting.
Lust slides through Yunho, making him shiver even as it heats his blood. It’s dangerous, this wanting, so he snaps, “In your dreams.”
“Not just mine.”
They look at each other again, Changmin’s eyes turning black and slumberous. A series of hot, dirty images flood Yunho’s mind. He exclaims, aroused and shocked, his pulse racing faster. “Don’t do that.”
Changmin sits back, looking innocent. “What?”
“That... whatever it is. Thrall. Compulsion.” Yunho shakes his head, trying to dislodge the images. “You made me forget you when I was nine. Now you’re putting sexy thoughts into my head. Don’t do it.”
“Very well.” Changmin sounds smug. “I won’t do it again. I promise.”
Yunho glowers at him. “A vampire’s promise.”
That seems to wound Changmin. He looks offended, lifts his chin. “You know I keep my word. You’re too important to me.”
“As a food source,” Yunho snaps. He half turns away from Changmin and tries to settle back onto the sofa, reaching for the remote control again.
“I know you don’t believe me, but it is more than that.”
Yunho isn’t in the mood. “You’re right. I don’t believe you.”
Before Yunho can turn the TV back on, Changmin reaches out and puts a hand over his injured wrist. “I could have killed you when you were nine years old. You were all alone. No one would have saved you. I could have taken you and drained you right there and then.”
Yunho meets his gaze. He remembers that day, the snow, the terror, the stench of blood on the fur of Changmin’s coat, the confusion when he woke up alone and Siwon had gone. He swallows. “I had four years’ worth of aconite in me. Good job you didn’t do it.”
Changmin makes a dismissive sound. “Four years’ worth of aconite would have been painful, but it wouldn’t have had any long-lasting effects. I had just dined very well-so well, in fact, that I was drunk on it.”
The reference to the slaughter makes Yunho feel sick. “So that was why you spared me. Because you were glutted on the blood of Siwon’s family.”
Changmin laughs, the sound utterly without amusement. “I could have stolen you away and kept you locked up until I was hungry.”
“Why didn’t you?”
A strange expression crosses Changmin’s face. “I don’t know.” He looks uncertain. “I wanted to wait. I wanted you to be older. I wanted it to be... mutual.”
Yunho stares at him, emotion rising like a spring tide. He knows Changmin is speaking the truth; he can see it in the look of bewildered wonder in Changmin’s eyes, and he can’t do this, he can’t deal with any of it any more.
Yunho gets off the sofa and walks out of the apartment. He punches the button for the lift, then when Changmin starts to follow him, he pushes through the doors to the stairwell and clatters down the steps, ignoring Changmin’s pleas to come back.
He has no fixed thought in his mind. He just wants to get away, wants some space. At the bottom of the staircase he shoves at the emergency exit and steps out onto the street. He hasn’t been outside in days, and it feels strange, fresh air, sunlight, the bite of the cold through his jacket and t-shirt. His shoes feel heavy on his feet, the leather chafing his bare skin. He has no idea where he’s going. He just walks and walks, trying to unleash some of the feelings trapped inside him.
He’s gone half a mile before he realises he’s in love with Changmin.
The realisation brings him to his knees. Yunho puts a hand over his mouth. Wonders how he could have been so blind, so insensible to his own emotions for all this time. He’s in love, and he doesn’t know if this is the greatest moment of his life or the absolute worst.
The pavement is cold and hard beneath his knees. Slowly he becomes aware of passers-by staring at him. In a minute someone will probably come over and ask him if he’s all right, and he won’t know what to say.
A silver-blue Mercedes roadster draws up beside him. The door opens. Changmin is leaning across, looking at him with that same gentle, bewildered wonder. “Yunho,” he says. “Please.”
There’s no compulsion necessary. Not now; not ever again. Yunho gets to his feet and climbs into the car.
* * *
Part 5 >>